North Prairie Pastorhttps://northprairiepastor.wordpress.com
The Word in the NorthTue, 19 Dec 2017 21:02:16 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/523bd8228452c6d6318204bc43c45fce?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngNorth Prairie Pastorhttps://northprairiepastor.wordpress.com
New bloghttps://northprairiepastor.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/new-blog/
https://northprairiepastor.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/new-blog/#respondTue, 22 Oct 2013 19:03:03 +0000http://northprairiepastor.wordpress.com/?p=1474]]>For those who are interested, I will be posting sermons and newsletters, etc., at Bishop and Christian here.

[This is my final sermon for Trinity and St. Paul’s. It’s been a great blessing to be the pastor in this place, and I want to thank the members publicly for their support and love throughout the past 6+ years. A new blog to come once I begin the work in East Wenatchee, Washington…]

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I think the moral of this story is pretty clear: don’t invite Jesus to your party. At least, not if you’re Pharisees and experts in the law who are trying to trip Him up, trap Him, catch Him healing on the Sabbath. But they did invite Jesus to their Saturday night Sabbath party. And they also invited someone else, a man with “dropsy.” I didn’t know what it was either, or at least I’d forgotten since the last time this text came up. It’s apparently what we would call edema, basically a buildup of fluid in various parts of the body. It’s painful and debilitating, as some of you may know. But they’ve invited this man and put him near Jesus, or at least where Jesus can see him, and now they’re watching out of the corners of their eyes to see what Jesus will do. Jesus knows what they’re trying to do, so He asks them, “Is it lawful, you experts in the law, to heal on the Sabbath?” No answer. So Jesus takes him, heals him, and sends him away. He doesn’t want to be at this party of the Law, anyway. Jesus has a better party for him. When he’s gone, Jesus asks them, “If one of you had a son or an ox, a member of your family or one of your animals, and it fell into a well, you’d wait until the Sabbath was over to pull it out, right? Of course not. You would pull it out immediately. So this man was down in the pit of his affliction, and I pulled him out. The Sabbath was made for mercy, not mercy for the Sabbath.”

Awkward silence. The room sort of goes dead for a minute. And then some reluctant smiles, the laughter and the talking starts again. People go back to what they were doing. And now Jesus starts watching. He sees how they are jockeying and maneuvering for position, trying to get closest to the host, because those are the most important seats. This is why James and John and their mother asked Jesus to let them sit at His right and left when He comes into His Reign. Those are the most important seats, next to the host. Jesus sees this and He says, “Hey! When you are invited to a wedding feast”–strange, since this isn’t a wedding feast– “when you are invited to a wedding feast, don’t take the best seats, the first seats, the most important seats. Because what if your host has invited someone more important than you? Then he will tell you to give your seat to this one, and, since all the other seats are full, you will go, red-faced with shame, to the lowest seat. Instead, take the lowest seat, the last seat, the worst seat. Then your host will come and say to you, “Friend, move up higher!” Because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

And then Jesus says to the host, “When you give a feast or a banquet, don’t invite your friends or brothers or relatives or rich neighbors, because they will be able to invite you back next weekend. Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, because they cannot repay you. But you will be blessed because you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous.” And now there’s complete silence. The party’s all shot to hell. Jesus has completely killed the mood. No one can eat or joke around now. The party’s done. And our text is done, but Jesus isn’t done. He goes on to tell another story, another parable. Notice that what Jesus says to the people and to the host is called “a parable” by Luke. But Jesus tells another story, and this one makes it clear that our ways are not God’s ways. Our feasts are not God’s feast. The evidence for this is that we can’t even take Jesus seriously. Almost every commentary, every article, every comment on this passage says something like, “Jesus isn’t really saying you can’t have your friends and relatives over; He doesn’t really mean you have to invite the poor and crippled and lame and blind into your house if you want to have a party.” Maybe, but that’s not what He says. And the fact that that’s the first thing that comes to our minds just shows how far away we are from God’s ways of dealing with us. Jesus’ words make me uncomfortable, because I’m an introvert, and I don’t like making chit-chat and small talk with people I don’t know. We can barely imagine doing what Jesus says to do. And that’s because our ways are not God’s ways. God’s ways are like this: a man gave a feast and sent his slave out to tell the ones he had invited that the party was ready. But all of them, together, had excuses for why they couldn’t come. It’s almost like it’s a conspiracy. This one had to check out some land, that one some cattle, this one was just married. None of them come to the feast; they’ve all got better things to do. When the slave tells his Lord, he gets angry and tells him to go out into the streets of the city and invite in the crippled, the poor, the blind, the lame. He does, and he reports back that there is still room. So the master says go out again, go everywhere, and bring them in, so that my house may be filled. He has a feast that is ready, and he wants everyone to come. But those who reject His invitation, who have better things to do, will never taste it.

God doesn’t invite His friends and neighbors, because He doesn’t have any. We think, they’ve got to be stupid to turn down a free party, or at least a free meal! The man is giving it away for free, and these people are excusing themselves based on things that don’t even have to be done at that moment. We’d be there in a second. But would we? Do we come to the feast of God when He invites us? Because the invitation has already gone out, from the beginning of creation. And when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to buy back those who were under the Law. To call everyone to the death and resurrection feast that has been prepared by Him. To come and eat the fruit of the cross, and it’s all free. The feast has begun! You have showered, and you’ve been clothed in the finest clothes that Jesus has. Surely we will not exalt ourselves above His invitation? We will not make excuses that we’ve got better things to do. We will not do things that we could do at other times. Will we? But we do; we have. It’s almost like it’s a conspiracy. And, in fact, it is: a conspiracy of Adam. In Adam, we have all been one, one huge rebellious man. All of us, enemies of God; all of us, the low-down, dirty, waterlogged scum of the earth. But that’s a good thing for us, because those are the sorts of people Jesus likes to party with. Jesus dies for His enemies, not His friends. Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners; He invites the lame, the crippled, the blind, the poor, to His feast, and He heals them every one. All of those fallen down into the pits of despair, disease, depression; all the losers and the lost; all the afflicted and the afterthoughts, Jesus says to you: Friend, move up higher. Come and sit next to Me, eat My Food. The feast has been prepared, and He wants His house full of the likes of you and me. The feast has begun, and even though you didn’t want Him at your party, He invited you to His. While we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

So I pray that you will come to know the treasure that is the feast of His Body and Blood; I pray that you will not exalt yourself above your need for Him; that you will find nothing better to do than to feast with Jesus at His table. And when you fall down into the pit of death, there is nothing Jesus will love better than raising you up, all because the Father raised up Him from the pit of His death. This is the feast of His victory. And He will have His House filled.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It seems that Jesus has been talking a little too much about judgment recently. Saying things like, “Do you think I have come to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” Things like, “Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky, but you don’t know how to interpret this present time.” Things like, “You had better settle your case with your divine accuser before you get to the Court, or else you will be thrown into prison; and you will not get out until you have paid the very last penny.” Things like, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” No wonder, then, that this person asks Jesus from the crowd: “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” After all that judgment talk and “negativity,” you can kind of understand the question. Now I don’t know where this guy is coming from. Maybe it’s a smug, self-satisfied question: “Besides me, of course, Lord, are the saved few?” Or maybe it’s a despairing question: “Lord, if the saved are few, how can I be sure I’m in?” Of course, it may just be an academic question. Here’s another rabbi to question on theological curiosities. This is probably closer to the sorts of questions we ask today. As a matter of theological curiosity, will those who are saved be few? It’s an abstraction, and it really has nothing to do with us. And even if Jesus answered the question, what good would that do us? Would it help you to know the number of the elect? It’s a question about people in general, about them; it has nothing to do with you.

But Jesus refuses to answer academic theological problems. He’s not the least bit concerned with satisfying the curiosity of this questioner, or with satisfying ours. Salvation is not an academic question for Jesus; it is a matter of your life and death. So Jesus says to the crowd, “Struggle, strive, strain to enter through the narrow door. For I say to you that many will be seeking to enter, and will not be strong enough. And the day will come when the master of the House will get up and close the door. And you begin to stand outside and knock and say, ‘Lord, open to us,’ and He will say, ‘I do not know you.’ And you will say, ‘But we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ And He will say, ‘I don’t know you; go away from Me, you workers of evil.’ And that will be a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, and you will be on the outside looking in. You will see your religious heroes on the inside eating and drinking in the eternal feast of God with the holy ones of God from every corner of the earth, but you yourselves cast outside. And first will be last and last will be first.”

Now we will try to distance ourselves from Jesus’ words. We will try to abstract them, to make them academic questions. We will be tempted to ask, “I wonder how many people sitting in churches on Sunday morning will find themselves on the outside looking in.” We will begin to think about people in our own congregation, and we will try to figure out which will be in and which will be out. Jesus has no time for that sort of question. This question is for you and me: what about us? Not those who are not here, but those who are. We, who have gathered in this place to hear the word of Jesus, to eat and drink His own Body and Blood in His presence; we, who call ourselves Christians; will we be on the outside? Will Jesus say to us, “I don’t know you”?

I am tempted to tell you a list of things that you must do to make sure you are on the inside. Some steps to follow so that you will know you’re not left out in the cold. But that wouldn’t work. You wouldn’t do them. Neither would I. Even if we knew that this particular list of things would get us into the pearly gates, we might try for a while, but we can never sustain it. In fact, we do have such a list, shortened into two things: Love God with everything you are, have, and do; and love your neighbor as yourself, giving every neighbor everything he or she needs. That’s the list, but it just doesn’t work; it can’t get you in the door, and it can’t keep you in. It won’t sustain you in the struggle, and it won’t cause the master of the house to let you in. So today I have a different word for you: I am here to lift up your drooping hands, which grow weary of the struggle; I am here to strengthen your weak knees, which are prone to collapse under the weight of sin and life in general; I am here to lay out a straight path for your feet, prone to wander—God, we feel it! That path is not one you have cleared or paved; it is the path Jesus walks to Jerusalem. And so we’re back at verse 22: Jesus was journeying on to Jerusalem. That may seem like a verse you can just skip over, a mere mile-marker in the text, but everything is in that verse! Jesus’ hands never grow weary; they are lifted up and nailed to a cross. Jesus’ knees never weaken; even in His agony, His struggle, in Gethsemane, He follows the will of His Father. Jesus’ feet never waver or wander from the path that is laid out. He sets His face to go to Jerusalem, and nothing can turn Him aside. He alone opens the narrow door for you to enter. His struggle becomes yours, on the way from baptism to the resurrection. And it is a struggle, it is strife, it does strain you to the breaking point, and then some. Everything around you is tearing at you, trying to pull you away from Christ, who is your life. It is a fight to the death to hear His word and receive His gifts. The whole world is opposed to Him, and so to you. But this is all proof of the Holy Spirit in you. Because if you did not have the Spirit from Christ, you would never struggle. You would not fight against your flesh. You would not strive against temptation. Your flesh is perfectly happy to go along with any and every sin. But you have the Spirit; you have been claimed by Christ.

That same Jesus is here, in the midst of your pride, your despair, your academic problems, your attempts to satisfy your curiosity; He is here to give you the one thing you really need: life in the midst of your death. The problem that the people in the crowd had was that they thought they were in because of their genealogy; they were seeking to get into the reign of God, but they were knocking at all the wrong doors. They missed the fact that Jesus, who is both the Way and the Door, was right there in front of them. And He says to us what He says to them: What are you looking for? What are you seeking? Seek first the Reign of God, and look! It’s right here in front of you! The Father gives it to you. Are you trying to get into heaven? Looking for the meaning of life? Trying to be good enough? Working on your spiritual resumé? Stop it! Here I am. And I know the way is long, and I know the struggle is hard, and I know the strife is fierce. Come and rest here. Come and eat and be strengthened; the journey is too much for you. But I have walked this way, and I am the only life there is. I was last and dead so you can be first and alive. Come in and eat the h’ors d’oeuvres of the feast that has no end. I know you, you are mine. I have written my Name on you. And I will bring you safely through the narrow door. On the day when the door is closed, you will find yourselves inside with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the holy ones of God gathered from every corner of the earth, the multitude without number, eating and drinking in the feast that has no end.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the things I appreciate about living here in this area is that when Jesus uses agricultural language, agricultural pictures, agricultural metaphors—and He does that a lot—I can understand it more clearly than I might be able to if I lived in a large city. There are clearly differences: no one at Jesus’ time farmed 10,000 acres. But even the differences sometimes shed light on what Jesus is saying. For example, you are very careful with how you plant seeds, you want to waste as little as possible, and maximize your yield and your harvest. So when Jesus talks about scattering seed everywhere, on the field, on the road, in the rocks, among the weeds, you know He’s talking about something other than normal farming practices. But this familiarity can cut both ways. The reason Jesus tells this story about this man with his crops and his barns is because of something that is said to him from the crowd. A man from the crowd says to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Perhaps that sounds as familiar to you as the agricultural language Jesus uses. The man may be in the right; he may have a good case. He may be right about what is fair, or even what is legal. But Jesus says, “Man, who made Me arbiter over you?” Jesus cannot solve this problem because the problem is not really the inheritance. The problem is greed, covetousness. So Jesus says, “Beware, watch yourself, be on the guard against all covetousness. Your life does not consist of the abundance of the things you own.” Beware all covetousness; covetousness is, says Paul, idolatry. Breaking the Ninth and Tenth Commandments is really breaking the First Commandment, that you fear, love, and trust God above all things. Covetousness is wanting what God has given to someone else, and not only wanting what God has given to someone else, but not trusting God to give you what you need. Coveting means that you are not content with what God has given you, so you want what God has given to someone else. And so you make an idol of what God freely gives.

So Jesus tells a story to illustrate this. He says, there was a certain man who had good fields, good crops, good harvests. God had blessed him with an abundance of good things, and there’s nothing wrong with what he had or even how much he had; after all, God had given it to him. But he comes to a point where he has so much that he doesn’t even have to work any more. He’s had such good harvests that he has enough to live easily for many years. So he says, I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones. I will store everything there, and I’ll take it easy, relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be required of you, demanded of you, and then all that stuff you saved for all the years to come, whose will it be?” So it is, Jesus says, for one who stores up treasures for himself, but is not rich unto God. And though Jesus probably made up this story, what if the man in the story was the father of the two brothers? I would not be surprised, because of how often such things happen. What if the sins of this father were visited on his two sons, as they greedily contended for his inheritance? Even so, to the world, this man’s plans just look like common sense. What’s wrong with what he did? He was just planning well, preparing, making sure he could support himself. But as with the inheritance, the problem is not the wealth, or the saving, but the attitude toward the wealth. This man has forgotten that everything he has is gift. He would have nothing if God had not given it to him. And not only did God give him all his possessions, but his very existence was a gift. He would be literally nothing, if God had not given him life and breath. And now his life was over, and what had he gained? What could he take with him? This is how it is for someone who has stored up treasure for himself, but is not rich in God.

See, there are only two places where your life can be. Either your life is in the things of this earth, in yourself, in what you own and what you’ve earned and what you’ve saved; or it’s in God. One or the other. You cannot serve two masters. Either you will love the one and hate the other, or you will hate the one and love the other. You cannot serve both God and possessions. If your life is in this world, then it dies when you die. You will have spent your life gathering and earning and saving, and when you die, what good will it do you? You will have spent your time trying to hold on to something you cannot hold on to. You’re trying to hold the wind in your hands. You’re trying to be the captain of a ship that has, your whole life long, been taking on water far faster than you can bail (Capon). You are trying to keep perishable things when you yourself are perishing (Augustine). You cannot keep this life, no matter how hard you try. It will be taken from you, sooner or later. And then what? What is all this worth? Whose will it be? And who cares? Emptiness of emptiness, said the preacher, and he was right.

But your life does not consist in the abundance of your possessions. If it did, you would die, and your life would be lost to you forever. There is only one safe place for your life, and that is in Christ. Lucky for you, you’ve already died, so your life cannot be in the things of this present age. You were buried with Christ in baptism, and you were raised with Him in His new life. So don’t go worrying yourself about the things that are here below. Set your mind on the things that are above. That doesn’t mean thinking about heaven and what it will be like. It means that your life isn’t here, but instead it is hidden with Christ in God. Christ is your life. If you belong to Christ, and you do, you have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. You have been crucified with Christ, and now you no longer live, but it is Christ who lives in you. And even the life you still live in the flesh, where you make use of the things of this creation, you live it by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave Himself up for you on the cross. He died, and you died with Him, so that you would be free of your frantic grasping after the things of this earth, free of your sin, free of your death which is certainly coming, and alive with a life that is not your own. You are dead! So what does all of this matter? Sure, you need it for the needs of the body in this life; and God gives it to you precisely for that reason. And there are all sorts of people here and around the world who need the abundance God has granted to you. And you’re free to give it to them, because it’s not your life. You know where your life is, and it’s not in the things you can see and touch and earn and spend. This stuff is all for this world, but your real life is hidden with Christ in God. Your real life is Christ, and if your life is Christ, then you are rich in God, because Christ is all and in all. You lack nothing, because Christ is everything. So use the things you need to use, and give away the things that others need, and your Lord will take care of you. And when Christ, your life, is revealed, then you will be revealed in glory, in the glory that He shares freely with you. Then you will be revealed in the glory of a new creation, which will never fade or die. You will be revealed in a new body, and you will never lose any of it. It cannot be destroyed, it cannot be burned up, it cannot be lost or stolen or rust or rot. You will live forever, because Christ lives forever. He is your life, now by faith in the life He gives to you, and then, finally, in the revelation of His glory.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”